Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tuesday May 09, 2006 @03:52PM
from the everybody-has-an-angle dept.

hotsauce writes "NASA administrator Griffin on a visit to Indian space facilities in Bangalore has signed an agreement to explore the moon with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). This agreement will see NASA instruments on a 2008 Indian moon mission, and further cooperation is being explored. An Indian paper has a different take on the visit. Interesting answer by Griffin on NASA outsourcing to ISRO."

hadn't you heard? NASA dropped about 500 contractors last year, and plans a 15.3% workforce cut [washingtonpost.com] by summer (though they're trying to buy out jobs and keep layoffs to a minimum). Now they're outsourcing work to India...

Since most people won't bother to read TFA to get the answer to the tease:

Griffin said NASA was not looking to outsource some of its work to ISRO. NASA was looking to combine the resources both agencies to undertake ventures of mutual interest.

That sounds like the mantra just before they officially announce 'well yeah, they are so cheap we will start outsourcing our engineers'. Now just how long before congress and the president is outsourced to india?;)

1) Put off the landing date to give tech a chance to advance further; there are a number of interesting techs on the horizon.2a) Cancel the CEV; launch astronauts on Shenzhou and Soyuz.OR2b) Finish the CEV, but with a disposable or minimally reusable design, launched atop an EELV to reduce development costs.3) Complete the DART program to eliminate the need for shuttle-delivered ISS components.4) Reduce manned spaceflight.5) Funnel the savings into many launch cost-reduction programs at once. Possibilities:5a) Scramjets5b) HEDM fuels (cubane compounds, nitrogen rings, solid ozone grains, etc)5c) Cryogenic solids/hybrids5d) OTRAG-style vehicles5e) Nuclear thermal propulsion5f) Materials tech (cheaper superalloy production methods, cheaper/stronger carbon structures, better linings, etc; especially important for reusables)5g) General engine tech (there's always exotic engines like aerospikes, but I was thinking more along the lines of flometrics-style pumps, simpler turbopump designs, better self-contained hydraulics, better sensors, etc)6) Also funnel the savings into in-space cost reduction tech:6a) In-space assembly.6b) Tether reboost6c) Magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters and associated high energy density nuclear power plants6d) Orbital tugs (rocket powered or ion powered)6e) Solar power tech (to reduce mass and increase power)6f) Exotic propulsion methods - antimatter-catalyzed microfission/microfusion, nuclear saltwater rockets, etc.6g) Lots of other miscellaneous craft tech that I don't want to have to take the time to enumerate.;)

Only after several generations of the smaller projects and one or two generations of the larger projects do you actually work on a vehicle that you plan to use as a workhorse and take a moonshot. By cutting back on the big capital expenses (the manned exploration program), you free up funds to take several technological routes at once, so you can pick the winner.

Newkyuler power in space? Good god man, you'll kill us all! If the thing blows up or de-orbits, that amount of newkyuler participles could, uh, well I don't really know but I'm going to go with "reduce the planet to a glassy sphere." Won't someone think of the children? You can't hug a children with radioactive satellites.

um.... not a single one of your suggestions would be cheap. Soyuz? Well, if you leave off the habitation module leaving only the rentry module, and reduce your crew size from what we want, and then invest billions to recreate the monstrous N1 booster, then... um...

Scramjets? Nuclear thermal? everything else you mention??? Sure, they would be good things to pursue on their own merits, but they would ALL be extremely expensive to develop. Saying they would be cheaper is like saying in 1970 "the Space Shuttle

"Soyuz? Well, if you leave off the habitation module leaving only the rentry module, and reduce your crew size from what we want, and then invest billions to recreate the monstrous N1 booster"What the heck are you talking about? The first thing that I said was to put off moon/mars/CEV and reduce manned spaceflight. The only heavy lift vehicles needed would be to complete the ISS, and that's why I mentioned completing DART so the launchers don't need to be manned, and thus we can use things like modified D

These are only workable if they are politically viable. None of them are politically viable. It is not in the United States' interests to lose the capacity for human spaceflight.We can't launch the CEV on an EELV; man-rating any of those vehicles would be a nightmare. We can't launch only on foreign launch vehicles, as said above. Technology development will NOT inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers, which is one of NASA's ultimate goals--human spaceflight is inspirational and helped us wi

First off, I agree that it's not politically viable. I'm just talking technology and economics.

We can't launch the CEV on an EELV; man-rating any of those vehicles would be a nightmare.

It'd be nothing compared to the difficulties they're having trying to get a working CEV design using SRBs. Cut the mission scope to be nothing more than ISS, cut the anticipated lifespan, and you have a much simpler engineering task.

not only is Nuclear Thermal Propulsion going to cost billions of dollars and take years to finish

True, at least in the case of a full-scale craft based on it. Hundreds of millions to the low billions for research (NERVA did most of it for us), and upper tens of millions per engine.

but if you have to spend $5B on the engine alone, and probably $B for each copy of it,

Way out of the ballpark. NERVA-2 (the spacecraft) was expected to cost 266m$ per 870k kg rocket in 1985 dollars (perhaps 400m$ today).

Sheesh, that's ANOTHER $5 billion

Um, no. The entire JIMO probe was slated to cost 400m$, which included a gas-cooled nuclear reactor.

and if we're successful, we'll have the largest ever nuclear protest group at the launch site...ASSUMING that we can get launch approval!

As stated, I deliberately ignored political consideration and approached only from a technological and economic standpoint. However, that's not really true. While they're popular to pillory, the Cassini protests were pretty darn small. Nuclear thermal propulsion might get a higher political profile, but a gas-cooled electricity-generating reactor won't.

"Antimatter-catalyzed microfission/microfusion"?!?!?! What are you smoking? If we have problems launching something like New Frontiers, which had an RTG on it, how are we going to launch the most dangerous thing known to mankind?

Okay, now you're off the deep end here. Do you know what *catalyzed* means? The amount of antimatter is miniscule. We simply cannot affordably produce (nor trap) enough antimatter with current technology to produce a pure antimatter thruster. Antimatter *catalyzed* microfission/microfusion uses energetically irrelevant amounts of antimatter to trigger fission or fusion reactions in microscopic specs of fuel.

I wasn't sure I was going to mod you down for being an idiot or responding to your comment. I will be the bigger man and respond. The Mughal Era [wikipedia.org] was from 1526-1707 and was defined as a Muslim empire. The era after that was the Maratha Era [wikipedia.org] who were (from Wikipedia): "The Hindu Marathas long had lived in the Desh region around Satara, in the western portion of the Deccan plateau, where the plateau meets the eastern slopes of the Western Ghats mountains."

You seem pretty clueless about Indian history. There has never been an empire, before the British, that ruled all of present-day India. (Actually, not even the British did -- Pondicherry was French and Goa was Portuguese.) Before the British, the last significant empire/was the Mughals, up until Aurangzeb. They lasted beyond 1707 -- until 1858 (Bahadur Shah Zafar), in fact -- but their reach did not go much beyond Delhi after Aurangzeb's time. As for the Marathas and others -- they were regional ruler

The Japanese were way ahead of Indians in many respects. Singular language and religion for the most part, with general homogeneity. The Indians have a fragmented culture - hundred of subdialects, subsects of religion that are well nigh incompatible with one another. Indians and Africans are very interesting to me, because most people see them from the outside as one monolithic culture, but they are an amalgam of dozens, hundreds of cultures. They get along imperfectly because they are different. This is mi

Poor economic policies. It's easy to call them poor in hindsight, but many countries thought them a good idea at the time (witness the Soviets, with otherwise very impressive achievements). Also, these policies were born out of fear--India had been colonized by a company [wikipedia.org], and was very concerned about foreign trade and private companies.

Since the 1990s, India has changed economic course, with good results [wikipedia.org]. The Indian government still believes that satelite communications forms an important part of basic inf

Your argument is weak in the sense that when Japan developed it's industry, 100+ years ago, it was betting on the emerging technology and economy. India is also making a bet on what the emerging technology and economy will be. I think there is actually some similarity to Japan's strategy. Also, given India's population, they need a big win. Space based technology and industry could provide that big win, competing with China over who is going to be the low cost industrial manufacturer would not be a big win.

True; there are only so many countries that can be in high profit industries before they become competitive low profit industries. India has to try to jump ahead to have a chance at anything that will bring in a lot of $$$.

Japan targeted a number of industries. In particular, they targeted autmobiles and electronics. This was set up by the gov. (MITI). At first, they were considered inferior products. But as time went on, they improved with quality while keeping costs low. That allowed them to build up a nice middle class. And now, of course, they are the power house that they are.

India targeted Hollywood (bollywood). Most of their films are sold outside of india, just not big in USA/Europe. In USA, you can see them at the

wow. how can such a (presumably) well educated crowd as slashdot remain so fricking ignorant about the world? whats with all these racist jokes? sometimes when i read slashdot's blatant racism, methinks that india is doing the world a huge favor by taking away valuable jobs from the hands of such ignorance.

first, you forget that the US dumped tons of $$ into the reconstruction of japan. the british did not do that for india, despite having wrecked the indian economic potential far more surely than the americans did the japanese. you forget that india suffered 200 yrs of brutal colonial rule that left all but a tiny fragment of its ppl uneducated. you forget that under colonialism, indians weren't even allowed to run anything that resembled industry... it was illegal to do more than grow basic commodity crops for british consumption. when india got indepedence, it had an industrial revolution to catch up on. japan did not have to go through that -- they had industrial know-how all along.

the indian space research organization is single-mindedly dedicated to the development of technology that benefits civilians. you can read about that yourself. the moon-mission is the first gamble they are taking wherein they hope that a challenging outer-space mission will both boost their technological know-how and in turn help civilians in the future, and also ignite the minds of indian children regarding technology and space. yes, i understand that americans who were born before the 90s can't see anything outside the cold-war prism. but really, indians just want to push their technology further...

why did japan not invest into military and nuclear technology the way india has? simply b/c it has always been under the american military and nuclear umbrella. india, on the other had, was treated as a pariah by the US for not kowtowing to american foriegn policy. india has had to suffer embargos and sanctions for its right to defend itself. in contrast the obstentatiously peace-loving japanese could pretend that it didn't want to develop a strong military or militaristic technology, when in reality it has just counted on the US to protect it.

ok, enough. i'm not getting paid to educate this lot. nor is it entirely feasible.

You forget the real issue is that India can afford nukes and a space program. Unfortunately, it can't afford literacy or infrastructure development.

As for your misrepresentations about the Brits not permitting industrial development, you may want to have words with this company [tata.com] as well as others. When the Brits left, the Indians did not want major assistance programs from any western power and were prefering to flirt with the Soviets at the time.

You talk lines quite easily.. if you were Indian or know our history, you wouldn't generalise.It's hard to trust "western powers" after 200 years of colonial rule. Colonial rule started cause we (Indians) trusted the British in business in the first place.

About health and literacy programmes, yes it's unfortunate that our level of literacy is low. But it doesn't mean there isn't enthusiasm to help. Factors such as corruption have hurt this.. but we still have goals to make everyone literate. It is in fact a

Half a century later, colonialism is still being blamed although it brought national unity (with the exception of partition), democracy and infrastructure. The problem is too little has been done to develop the infrastructure.

I say forget the fscking space program at ISRO in Banglaore, why not just make sure that the people there all have access to clean running water, or perhaps the politicians owning the water trucks won't like it. Access to clean water is seen as a key indicator of development, not a s

Wow what bullshit. How can you be modded insightful?>! For a start, Japan was already an advanced nation before the US "dumped tons of $$ into its reconstruction". Do you really think that attack on Pearl Harbour was done by a third world nation?! Second, "all but a tiny fragment of" india's "ppl" were "already uneducated" before they saw British rule. Don't blame it on the Brits. Blame it on the Indians themselves and their thousands of years of rotten caste system that favours only a tiny fragment of t

you forget that the US dumped tons of $$ into the reconstruction of japan. the british did not do that for india,

You've forgetten an important fact: India is largely unaffected by the WW2 (when compare with most of the countries in Asia/ Europe). No major battle has broken out on her soil. So, the rebuilt effort after independence is more about how to revert to normal life after colonialism. (Well, the Bengal famine did kill many civilian, but it mainly affects the regions in where known as Bangladesh r

When Japan was a 3rd-world nation, its government spent almost no money on space development. Rather, Tokyo plowed money into developing industry so that Japan could reach 1st-world status as quickly as possible.

You're as ignorant as you are anonymous. When was Japan a "third world nation"? That refers to a country with no industrial infrastructure. Japan hasn't been in that category since 1868, when they were forced to give up isolationism and modernize. They've been an industrial nation ever since. Perhaps you're thinking of the period right after WW II, when they were recovering from the destruction of their industrial centers. But even then, they hardly resembled a "third world" nation: they were still an industrial economy, albeit a badly damaged one.

By contrast, the Indian government wastes huge sums of money on space exploration and nuclear-weapons development. Meanwhile, the majority of Indians live in squalor.

Well, I'm not going to endorse nuclear weapons in India or anywhere else. But if you think that spending money on technological developement has no impact on India's poor, you're as ignorant of economics as you are of history. In order to take better care of its people, India has to grow its economy, and to do that, they need to invest in intellectual capital. They've been very successful at that, as a lot of Americans who've seen their jobs taken over by Indians will tell you.

"Why did Japan succeed but India fail?"I think comparision between India and Japan is wrong. Japan was fighting the world during WWII i.e. it was a world power, India at the time was coming out of a British rule that had slaved it.

All Japan really had to do is recover from WWII and the nukes. India had to start from scratch. Its only been 55 odd years or so since British rule ended in India. 55 Years is not a lot of time for a country to get freedom and stand on its feat.

Closest I would compare here is that Japan has succeeded and India is still writing its exam, judgement is still out.

There is a reason to why everyone is worried about outsourcing to India. This is also where NASA can learn from India. Budget for ISRO is nothing compared to that of NASA, nonetheless ISRO is in a select class of organization that has managed to launch a one ton plus satellite into orbit.

This is where NASA has most to gain, getting things done for lesser costs. Further, no single event except for wars have helped technology as much as NASA's Man on the Moon mission.

Not to mention, India's budget allocations for space exploration is miniscule compared to, not just imperial Japan's war-budget, but also to India's own spending on poverty alleviation. Perhaps not compared to primary education or healthcare in some parts, but hey, you weren't complaining about the state of schools in Bastar region were you?

Japan had one big advantage over India . They never let themselves be colonized at the height of imperialism. Even when they finally became a colony of the US it was after a long war which had taught the Americans fear and respect for their colonial subjects. In contrast when the British came to India , India was going through a pretty bad period of Muslim colonization and Hindu resistance with the result that India was a patchwork of small Hindu and Muslim states each fighting each other and not having any

It's troll tuesday. Slashcode turns all troll downmods into positive karma on tuesdays, didn't you know? Anyways, I've been here since the beginning. My karma was crazy high before the cap. It hasn't budged from "excellent" since. I make 4-5 +5 comments per week, at least. I could give a rats ass if some humor impaired mod thinks I'm a troll.

I purposely worded the phrase "another take on the/visit/" and not "another take on the story" because I found it interesting that while the BBC thought Griffin's visit important for the moon exploration cooperation, Sify (and others) thought the visit important as a sanctions ender.

I did see the link to the Sify story that reported on the MOU (it's clearly in the story I linked to), but thought the end of (most) sanctions to be an important story, too.

Since progress in this field is really beneficial to all of humanity, it's really good to see more countries joining forces to move progress along. I think in the long run privitization of the space industry is the way to go, but until that industry takes off a world wide coalition to push things forward might be our best bet for progress.

I doubt that "benefitting all humanity" has anything to do with this partnership. It's about the economics of it.First of all, we must remember that Indian engineers are just as capable as engineers from any other part of the world. While we have all had horrible experiences talking with tech support representatives over there, that is in no way indicative of their engineering talent. India especially has become one of the world leaders in aerospace research.

Yes, but the end results are still the same. If we can do more with the resources we have this way, then there are tangible benifits to the field. That's the whole point of countries teaming up like this.

United we rise, divided we... stretch our budget a little thinner to rise.

The privatization pancea comes up on every space story, but science is not neccessarily profitable. That's why there has always been a strong government role in fundamental research. Hence government funding, and (even in the US) institutions like the NIH, CDC, and yes, NASA.

Yeah thanks. It was a joke. Believe it or not most people always knew the difference.;-)

I'm not sure it was a joke. I don't know all of Irwin Allen's work, nor have I watched much Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, or whatever else he's done. But it woudln't shock me if there was a Lost in Space episode where they landed on some planet and met some evil alien East Indians or another with evil Cowboys. It wouldn't shock me at all if if there was an episode with East Indians and Cowboys f

NASA has decided that it would be cheaper to send Indian employees up with the astronauts and sell the radio equipment. If the austronauts have a problem, they can ask the tech support crew, who will have scripts for the most common problem situations.

Now that we've outsourced (offshored) offworlding to India... The country with the least space experience that still can launch sats... we could buy off-the-shelf Mars systems Made-in-China or somesort instead of doing a stupid space-exploration thingy... Afterall, isn't that what made WalMart great?

NASA is dying from all I can tell. They have cleaned out several of the space centers turning them into almost ghost towns by cutting funding for everything not directly related to the moon mission. That means that most projects were dropped dead in the water. The few people remaining had to shift to different projects to stay afloat.
With all of the crazy cuts of funding, it doesn't surprise me if the only way we can afford to go to the moon would be to piggyback on somebody else who is willing to put the

Flying carpets come out of Persian or Arab folklore, not Indian. I know you think they're all the same, but you're just displaying your typical Western ignorance, as are the moderators that modded you funny.

Your joke is equivalent to if NASA decided to work with the French Space Program and I made some jokes about German stereotypes (all the astronauts will have to eat sauerkraut, etc). It doesn't make any sense, and I doubt it would be modded funny.

Flying carpets come out of Persian or Arab folklore, not Indian. I know you think they're all the same, but you're just displaying your typical Western ignorance, as are the moderators that modded you funny.

Didn't we land, and subsequently conquer, you Indians back in 1492? Sheesh, show some respect to your overlords.

Please re-parse that sentence. You assumed it meant that Western people are typically ignorant. A second interpretation could be that GP is displaying a specific type of ignorance, one that is typical to Western people, namely, in the area of foreign cultures. I move that he's quite right.

Many of those 'Western Inventions' were due to easterners living/working/studing in the west...

Try visiting a communications (engineering) research group at a local university.... You will be lucky to see a non-zero number of Americans there.... (besides the janitoral staff). And if you are lucky, then you should be buying lottery tickets if the one you see is pursuing a PhD.

I just think it's neat that India is sending a mission to the moon, allbeit an unmanned one. And for all the outsourcing jokes, the fact that it's NASA getting payload space from India seems to make NASA seem like more of a joke. Of course, to them it probably is a joke, since they've already been there. It looks like, with the ESA and Bulgaria also sending payloads, the better joke would be one about the Indian mission being like a taxi driver. If it was Indian astronauts in a NASA shuttle, then there'd be

Of course, to them [NASA] it probably is a joke, since they've already been there.

A surprising number of people are expressing this sentiment. NASA "has already been there" with much older equipment, most of which was simply geared to keep humans alive. This mission gives the opportunity to do real science with modern equipment, and answer new questions, for instance Smart 1's survey of surface elements to confirm theories about the origin of the moon.

My My! This is truly a stunning accomplishment by India, to see its Space Program (by far, the most advanced amongst developing countries, and very favorably comparable to even the Japanese program), recognized so well by NASA. This is truly a coming of age for a very important country in the world, and I have to say, Hats off to the Indians -- they are making their rightful claim to being one of the most important nations in the world.

India has been courted by Presidents of both parties in America, and counts a full 1/3 of Congress in the India Caucus. That speaks volumes for how important India is to our American interests. Then there's the obvious close ties India has to Europe, and especially Britain. American foreign policy interests are also greatly helped by a country that is the world's largest democracy in a rather un-democratic neighborhood, and has very good relations with Israel, also in a neighborhood where Israel has few friends.

The cold war relations between America and India were truly a mistake, and a lost opportunities for both our countries, and I'm glad to see the US finally form the strong bonds with a country that will necessarily be one of the most important in the world in the coming years.

Years of propping up dictators in Africa and Pakistan have done us no good, and have only bred festering flash-points. It's time we gave some serious thought to a relataionship that has and will continue to produce excellent dividends for both parties.

"New Delhi, we have a problem."
"Thank you for calling Mission Control. May I be having your name, address, and current software version please?""The software has locked us out. We need you to make a course correction in exactly 20 seconds!"
"Certainly sir. If I could just be having your license number please.""License number?! Just fire thrusters 2 and 3 for 4.5 seconds on my mark!"
"You're Mark? Thank you for giving me your name, but I am needing your license code too please.""Our license number is going to be 3-D-E-A-D-G-U-Y-S if you don't fire the thrusters in--5 seconds!"
"If this is an emergency request, please be giving me your express service code.""Express... Hey Buzz, crack the main hatch open for 5 seconds on my mark... NOW! We'll have to hope this works."
"I'm sorry sir, but it appears you have voided your warranty. Please be having a nice day."[click]

Racist?! For a simulated accent imitation? Would I be a racist if I imitated a Newfie accent? Or a Southern accent? How about Cockney or Scots?

I read a tech support horror story from the customer's point of view once where the support tech had such a heavy accent that the customer could not understand what he was saying. The customer asked to speak to someone else. The supervisor called him a racist and hung up on him, even though he had made no other comment than "I cannot understand what this technician is saying."

You, sir, are a knee-jerk reactionary. People talk differently. People think differently. Misunderstandings between people with different dialects, and different thought patterns, are funny. They have been since Much Ado About Nothing, and most likely long before that.

Do you complain about every comedian who makes a culture-oriented joke? Must keep you busy, because that's pretty much all of them.

Well, I have read thousands of stories of pathetic helpdesk services years before dell outsourced its helpdesk to India. The fact that you had to pick ONLY Indian helpdesk to do some karma whoring definitely makes you a racist, and nothing else.

LOL! Yeah, why didn't he pick some other nationality to post in a story about INDIA AND NASA???

You probably think that this [youtube.com] is racist too. Oh my god! They just called an Indian woman a "curry & rice girl"! How racist of them!

This is not 'outsourcing' as some said, but is in fact a very good step in the right direction.

As we know, space exploration is not cheap, and to advance the knowledge and technology at a significant pace often requires the resources of a government, or several governments.

With very few politicians seeing a return on investment (justly or not) in space travel, NASA budgets are shrinking, and cooperation between governments to reduce the financial burden sounds like a great thing.

Dear Mr. Troll,
I have been requested by the Nigerian National Slashdot Company to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Nigerian National Slashdot Company has recently concluded a large number of mod points. The mods have immediately produced mod points equalling 5 points. The Nigerian National Slashdot Company is desirous of modding you down, however, because of certain regulations of the Nigerian Government, it is unable to mod at this time.
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Well, there are several problems with this concept of the "minimum miss distance" that bug me analytically:

1. The current nominal miss distance is 33LD, with a mimium miss distance of.04LD. When two estimates are so darn far apart, it makes it difficult to have any faith in their estimations. It's like saying, "between 4 and 33 million people will die of the bird flu". Some of the larger parts have been calculated more accurately, but this one has not been updated in over a week.

Umm... actually, that'd be more like saying "between 4 and 3300 people will die of the bird flu.". Nice try though. I think those boys at NASA know a bit more about math than you do. They don't want to be hit with a comet either.
Your analytics leave a bit to be desired. I think you're more into fearmongering with pseudo-science.

FYI: Roche limit does not apply for three reasons first the fragment is probably held together by chemical bonds not gravity and second on a near miss there is little time for such effects to take place. (Yes over time a glass of water will evaporate in a low humidity room but it take more than a few min for that to be significant.) And finally even where the fragment to break apart each fragment would continue more or less on the same path which would cause it to miss the earth.
As to why you ignore the

FYI: Roche limit does not apply for three reasons first the fragment is probably held together by chemical bonds not gravity and second on a near miss there is little time for such effects to take place. (Yes over time a glass of water will evaporate in a low humidity room but it take more than a few min for that to be significant.) And finally even where the fragment to break apart each fragment would continue more or less on the same path which would cause it to miss the earth.

As to why you ignore the earth's gravity in all but the closest near miss: With a V relative of 15km(km/s) and a distance of 15,360 KM the object is being accelerated by a force of (12,756.3/(12,756.3+15,360)) *.0098km/s/s = 0.00445km/s/s and that's tangential to it's path but it's passing the earth at that point so it makes little difference. Steeping back to 30,000 KM the object is accelerating at.00111km/s but most of that vector is not pulling the asteroid into a collision course. You can think of it as a large vector along it's path and a much smaller vector pulling it into a collision course. The further out you go the smaller the net force and the smaller the fraction that's pulling the object into a collision course.

Earth's gravity is important when you want to know how the object is being deflected but it does little to alter the probability of impact for objects with a high relative velocity.

PS: Feel free to calculate the two vectors at 30,000KM and 60,000KM on a near miss.(Now with line breaks...)